Rundgren's anger fuels return to rock

January 02, 2009|SAM WOOD The Philadelphia Inquirer

Todd Rundgren is fuming mad. And for fans of the 60-year-old rocker, that's reason to celebrate. Rundgren has spent much of the last two decades dabbling in multimedia experiments, techno and soundtracks. Do we need to mention the bizarro exercise where he retooled his biggest hits -- "Hello It's Me" and "I Saw the Light" -- into out-of-tune bossa novas? But his anger at eight years of the Bush administration has pushed Rundgren to return to classic form. Classic rock, that is. He's picked up his guitar and is wielding it with a revitalized sense of mission. Rundgren always has been a rock 'n' roll chameleon, sliding effortlessly from Beatles-style pop to progressive rock to soft rock. With "Arena," Rundgren's latest full-length outing, he's returned to guitar-hero mode, summoning echoes of AC/DC, Boston and Robin Trower. "The music is designed to make people just want to pump their fists in the air and have a visceral response," Rundgren says from Monterey, Calif., where he had just finished speaking to a conference on the future of the music industry. The music is designed to seduce, Rundgren says. "I'm hoping that people, after a few listens, will begin to absorb the message," he says. "It's almost quaint." Underneath all the stomping bombast, Rundgren says, he wanted to impart a sense of determination and hope. "The whole record is about the failure of men in recent years," he says. "How our leadership, political and economic, has turned out to be liars and cowards and devious people of all kinds. "But what we really admire about men is how they search for truth and bear up under awful burdens without complaint. That's what this project is all about." Rundgren's plans for the new year include more touring and a return to production duties at his Hawaiian studios. In March, he'll be producing the New York Dolls.